Thirty-one years ago, on the advice of County Manager Marvin Hoffman and Siler City contractor Tim Nance, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners called for the statue on top of the “Our Confederate Heroes” monument in downtown Pittsboro to be removed for repairs.
According to a June 23, 1988 story in The Chatham Record, Nance told the board he was “concerned that the soldier may be about to leave his post as he can be seen gently swaying in high winds.” A few weeks later, the soldier was removed; a Record story reported that he looked “corroded and unstable” as he came down.
More than 11,000 days after that soldier came down, it’s the subject of another plan to come down — this time likely for good.
The Chatham County Board of Commissioners’ decision Aug. 19 to terminate the deal between the county and the Winnie Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to house the statue and its pedestal in front of the Chatham County Historic Courthouse ended a many-months debate across the county about the monument’s place in Chatham in the 21st century. That debate could be seen in public comments and other statements made on various forums and in conversations in the aftermath of the decision.
A national phenomenon
It was a decision made with a backdrop of similar incidents. The vote came the night before the one-year anniversary of the forceful removal of the Silent Sam statue on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. While the commissioners were listening to public comments, the Winston-Salem City Council voted 4-2, with one abstention, to change the name of the city-run Dixie Classic Fair. Earlier that day, the City of Norfolk, Virginia, filed a federal lawsuit arguing a Virginia law that prevents the removal of Confederate monuments was unconstitutional, according to The Virginian-Pilot.
Several of the public comments since April, when more than 300 people crowded the Chatham County Agriculture & Conference Center in Pittsboro, have revolved around some residents stating those supporting the monument’s removal are outsiders who aren’t really part of Chatham.
“Residents want to come in and destroy our culture,” Jane Pate said at the April 15 commissioners meeting. “They are attacking us, they are doxxing us.”
“Doxxing” is a term describing the internet practice of researching and sharing private or identifying information about an individual or organization. Pate was not alone in her perception.
“I also am convinced there are paid political activists, traveling this country, looking for a cause to support,” Charles Lutterloh said that same night, without providing any evidence that it was happening in Chatham. “They prey on young minds, many like our college-aged students. They get ‘em fired up and let them go do the dirty work, and these people fade back.”
Last week, John Shirley called those moving into the county and supporting removing the statue “guests” in Chatham.
“When you’re a guest at another person’s house and you’re eating at their table, you don’t say their dog is ugly or the food doesn’t taste good,” Shirley said. “You just enjoy the meal and leave. For our guests down here, we love our guests in the south, but I think it’s time they try to assimilate a little and try to embrace the south and not fight against it.”
Statements like these reflect a sentiment echoed by many public speakers: removing the monument is changing history and goes against Chatham’s history and character.
A new county?
But as shown by the board of commissioners’ shift from 31 years ago to today, those leading the county’s government say there’s a change in the county’s values.
“The monument represents a very different time in Chatham County, but its message does not represent our values today,” Mike Dasher, the board’s chairman, said in a statement released two days after the decision. “We hope that by moving the monument to a more appropriate historical site, the lives of Confederate soldiers can still be memorialized, while also respecting everyone in our diverse community today.”
Commissioner Karen Howard, who was born in New York and spent most of her childhood in the Bahamas, said in April that part of finding agreement on the issue was deciding that the monument “doesn’t reflect us all.”
“You can’t have two completely opposed positions and say the symbol we’re discussing represents the entire community,” she said.
But that didn’t assuage some who wanted to keep the monument. After the vote, a man shouted angrily, “You’re four traitors against Chatham County. One, two, three, four.” He pointed at Hales, Crawford, Dasher and Howard. Another man came up to the microphone and said the commissioners didn’t know what they were doing.
“Island girl, she’s just here,” he said, pointing to Howard. “I hope y’all rot in hell.”
During the deliberations, Howard expressed a desire to see some kind of community reconciliation, through jeers from the crowd.
“Certainly the voices of black people have not been heard in the telling of these stories, and if we are going to have a conversation, if we are going to have a disposition of difficult issues that truly reflects our community, it has to involve multiple voices,” she said. “I would like to perhaps propose that the community look at having some sort of reconciliation, some sort of panel where we can have other people help us walk through these difficult issues. I understand that it is a difficult issue and there is a lot of passion behind it, but talking over me is not going to resolve this.”
Moving forward
Dasher said he believes that if the same agreement on the monument was brought to the board today that was brought to the county in 1907, it would go nowhere.
“All the people that would support it could fit inside this courtroom,” he said. “If we were asked to approve that agreement that was approved in 1907, there’s no way in hell. That’s what it boils down to, for me. That was fine for Chatham County in 1907, that’s not the Chatham County we are. If that’s disappointing to some people, I can’t fix that.”
Arementha Davis, a member of the Chatham Community NAACP, said at an organization board meeting at the Chatham Community Library in Pittsboro on Monday that she would have been OK with the monument’s place at one point in history, but no more.
“It seems like we’re going in the opposite direction,” Davis said. “So I would be just as pleased to see it come down. The way the country is now — the accomplishments that we have made in the past seem to be null and void now.”
At that same meeting, branch president Mary Nettles said Chatham County was changing.
“And it is important for everyone to work together,” she said.
What happens next, at this point, is up to the UDC. Winnie Davis Chapter President Barbara Pugh said in a letter to Dasher earlier this month that the UDC would “seek legal opinion from a judge” if they did not leave the monument in place. Pugh has not yet responded to an email seeking comment after the decision.
The North Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans pledged their support to the local UDC in their “fight against the Chatham County Board of Commissioners” and said the board offering an option to reimagine the monument was a “death warrant for the memorial.”
“Based on its actions on Monday night, the Board clearly had no intention of ‘compromising’ and would have only accepted as a solution to this manufactured ‘problem,’ an agreement by the UDC to remove the memorial from its place of prominence,” the statement, which was not attributed to an individual but the group as a whole, said. “The Board is now using the UDC as a scapegoat in media for their ill-conceived strategy to pursue the memorial’s removal under a laughable theory of ‘trespass.’”
Dasher said the UDC and the board “have different interpreations of where the law is,” but added the board would be willing to work with the UDC on “a plan” if the group wanted to “revisit working together on something.”
Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.